How Playboy Models' Bodies Have Changed

Here's Exactly How Much Playboy Models' Bodies Have Changed

Earlier this week, Playboy made a shocking announcement: No longer will its readers see nudity in its pages. "You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free," the magazine's CEO, Scott Flanders, explained to The New York Times. "And so it’s just passé at this juncture." Our friends at Wired took this historic announcement as an opportunity to create a graph of the evolution of Playboy's ideal woman, harking back to when Betty Blue posed as Miss November in 1956.

Because Playboy publishes the body measurements of its monthly Playmate centerfolds, we can see exactly how those models' bodies have changed in relation to those of average American women. Spoiler alert: From 1960 to 2002, the average Playmate BMI dipped from 19.4 to 18.2 (average Playmate breast volume, Wired notes, has remained the same). The average BMI of a twentysomething American woman, meanwhile, increased from 22.2 to 26.8.

Another way of putting it: The beauty standard set forth by one of the world's most popular arbiters of sexual taste has never been further from what American women actually look like. Head to Wired to check out the interative graphic in full.